Well, we all know that you’re a mom of three enviable children. Or a nurse. Or a grad student with a super-interesting major. But maybe you’re tired of everybody thinking that’s all you’re about. You wish we'd sit beside you a little longer and ask more questions. Then you could admit that you played accordion in a family band. (Or maybe you don’t want us to know about [...]
Once again, my strategy for making spring appear has worked. Here’s how I did it: I pretended I wasn't wishing for it. I sprinkled my calendar with days reserved for pajamas, donuts and Netflix. It’s all about hiding under good blankets and waiting out chilly misery. I’ve had an Ugly Betty winter, a Grey’s Anatomy winter, a Parks and Rec winter (two of them, actually) [...]
I had a talent, back in my school days, for avoiding the classes that made you write research papers. I could kick myself now. Of course, the two papers I managed to write were pretty boring stuff, something about the planet Jupiter, and the history of the communist party in America. But I think the point of the boring papers, the ones you pretty [...]
I opened Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake with skepticism. The cake on the cover looked tempting indeed. But the thought of something lemon-flavored, generously iced with chocolate frosting? Maybe somebody knows books much better than they know cooking. Nevertheless, I fell in love with Rose Edelstein immediately. At nine years old, she discovers, to her shock, that she can taste emotions in [...]
Today, let’s talk about the vacation you never take. Oh, you dream of this place — the beautiful blue water […]
A faithful reader of this blog requests that we discuss today’s book, A Spool of Blue Thread by Ann Tyler. Blue Thread is a family saga in which the working-class Whitshank family lives out their days in a wonderfully crafted house in one of the better Baltimore neighborhoods. […]
A few artfully-arranged ponds dot our neighborhood. The powers that be stocked them with fish, then posted the rules.According to the signs next to the ponds, only neighborhood residents are supposed to fish there. Now, do I know my neighbors? Could I recognize twenty faces? Ten? Barely. But when I see some guy in a t-shirt casting his line, and a truck parked nearby, I'm [...]
As 24-hour news stories go, I missed it. I lost hours of my life to hanging chads, to O.J.'s glove, to a girl named Monica and unmentionable things one can do with cigars (so sorry for that one, kids), but I totally missed one of the biggies. I went to Relief Society one night where somebody, in the opening prayer, asked God to comfort those [...]
I had the happy accident this week of watching a movie that illuminated a book I had just read. I planned a nice mid-winter goof-off day in which I ate cookies and cashews, drank hot chocolate and watched a Tivo-ed "Sabrina," with Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford, and Greg Kinnear. As Ford and Kinnear, the rich brothers, traded barbs about who worked too much and who [...]
I just finished Plenty by Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon. The authors, a couple from Vancouver, spent a year eating only foods that came from a 100-mile radius of where they lived. That would make me illegal by their rules. Am I prepared to do without chocolate chips? Cool Ranch Doritos? Lean Cuisine? Even if the authors claim that your average meal travels 1500 [...]
